Reaching the end of the tether - CCing a 16m, any tips?

[PrettyCandles]

Ds2 generally goes to sleep without too much trouble, we stroke him and stay with in the room until he is asleep. He has slept through the night once (last week!) and occasionally sleeps as much as 6h without waking properly. When he does that we hear him on the baby monitor coming into light sleep, coughing/groaning/crying out, but he then resettles himself. Trouble is that he rarely does that! More often he wakes 3 or 4 times in the night, and on top of that sometimes he's awake for the day from 5.30am.

Recently he's been having tantrums during the night because it is clear that he doesn't want a feed or a cuddle, he wants to be asleep.

So I think we have to bite the bullet and do CC.

But can we still put him down in the way we have been? Are we 'allowed' to help him go to sleep if we then do not help him resettle during the night?

Please somone answer me. I'm turning into a screaming fucking harridan. I can't take it any more.

Hi, how much sleep does he get in the day? Tbh it sounds like you are doing well. I have done CC but my dd was 12 weeks so no experience of doing it with an older baby. Can he re-settle himself when he wakes those 3-4 times?

"Doing well"? I'm lucky if I get 4-5h sleep in total each night. The longest stretch of sleep is rarely more than 2h. It's turning me into a complete fiend, not a loving gentle mother.

If he wakes he cannot/does not resettle himself. I'm doing my best to get him to have one good nap 1.5-2h in his cot after lunch, but it rarely works. If he's had a bad night then he falls asleep early, generally on the way home from dropping the others at school, in which case he's not ready for a nap until just before we have to go aout again to pick them up from school. So on 'bad' days he'll have two short naps in the buggy. At best they'll total 1.5h. Good nights tend to go with good days, nap-wise.

PC, we tried CC with DS at 15 months. It worked really well: DS went from taking ages to go to sleep and waking every couple of hours to sleeping through. We tried the method outlined in Toddler Taming - I feed DS and read books until he's sleepy, put him in cot and leave. The first night I went in at 2 mins, then 4, then 6 etc. We had probs with him settling to sleep tho.

Why not try CC for the wakings only and see how you get on? If it doesn;t work in a few nights you can try it another way.

BTW, if I go in I pick DS up and give him a cuddle till he's quiet (or quieter) and then put him down and leave. Some people say only to shush and pat but this way works best for us.

How many nights did it take, Effie? And have you ever had to re-do it, IYSWIM?

He was going to sleep within 5 mins and waking once or twice within a few nights. It took a few weeks before he stopped waking altogether and going to sleep without crying at all (he still moans a bit if he's v tired). After the first night, I rarely had to pick him up when he woke, he'd cry for a few mins and then go back to sleep. The only time he wakes for long now is if he has a really good reason.

Honestly, I was against doing CC (and wouldn;t have done it under a year) but it worked really quickly and well. I can't beleive I actually get time to myself in the evenings and more than a couple of hours sleep at a time at night.

(we were co-sleeping as well, so it was a big change for DS to go in the cot and stop night feeds).

We started last night, with dh and I taking turns - he dealt with the first waking, I dealt with the next, and so on. Theory being that one can sleep while the other This morning I asked him how the night had been, his response "I don't remember...and I don't want to remember." I think he's taking it harder than I am, but then he's not sunk quite to the depths of sleep deprivation that I have.

Dh couldn't bear to do hard-core CC, so we've decided that as long as ds2 is cooperating and lying down in the cot, we will continue to stroke and soothe him and will stay in the room with him. But if he sits up or fights us off we will leave the room in 'traditional' CC style. Hope it works.

Shit I hate doing this.

My post seems to have lost a couple of lines [puzzled].

Theory one can sleep while the other 'does' the CC. Of course niether of us sleep while ds2 screams.

When you go in in the night, do you soothe/stroke until he is actually asleep again? Or just until he is quiet and sleepy?

If the former, you are arguably making him dependent on the soothing/patting to go to sleep at all (so Dr Ferber, the cc guru, would say) and making the problem worse not better. Most sleep training methods involve a gradually decreasing level of interaction - going in every 6 mins, then 4 mins, then 2 mins if cc, or shush/patting that liitle bit less every few nights, until baby can go it alone.

That is a v v simplistic explanation, and many mumsnetters would ardently disagree.

Yes, but dh can't bear to leave ds if he's crying. And ds will cry if we leave the room before he's asleep. I don't mind stroking him to sleep at bedtime, it only takes 10-20 mins and I reduce the stroking throughout that time.

It was all I could do to persuade dh to do the CC at all. And to persuade him not to pick ds up out of the cot to cuddle him. And to let me deal with the whole of 'my' waking, as we normally releave each other after 30-45mins of crying. But I think that consistency is probably v important in CC.

I think ds shouldn't be cuddled because he doesn't respond at all well to that. PUPD never worked for him because a cuddle wouldn't calm him down.

That sounds like an awful situation , you must be knackered after 16m. But what you are doing ISN'T cc, and won't work as such I don't think.

I did the same thing with my dd - wanted to try cc because nothing else would work, but couldn't bear to leave her. So I stayed in the room, and every couple of minutes stroked her head and said 'shush'. Basically, we got nowhere after weeks; it wasn't until i started to leave the room as per the proper Ferber methodology that she started to go to sleep sooner and sooner. I did it all myself, leaving dh out of the equation because otherwise he would have undone my 'good' (heavy irony) work. I think the general idea behind the cc method is to make a nighttime visit from Mummy so boring it isn't worth waking up for, so stroking and attention are out.

The Millpond Sleep Clinic has some web pages that many Mumsnetters have sworn by that might help clarify a strategy to suit you both. And there is always co-sleeping - many would swear by it.

I do hope things get better.